


wildflowers (in your arms i'll stay)

by dreamweavernyx



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Growing Up, Kids being adorable, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 21:59:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamweavernyx/pseuds/dreamweavernyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Merlin's a part-time kindergarten teacher, and Arthur's watched too many chick flicks with Morgana to know what he's doing. Everything sort of snowballs from there, and Morgana never lets him live it down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wildflowers (in your arms i'll stay)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isolus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isolus/gifts).



> I've seen a lot of Merthur fics where Arthur's the older one, but not so many where Merlin's the one who's older, so I wanted to try out that dynamic.
> 
> This fic comes with its own [theme song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOu0DuxFAT0). (Playing it while reading is optional.)

He first meets Merlin at kindergarten.

 

Arthur’s five years old: too young to start grade school, too old (in his father’s eyes, anyway) to be spending time living it up at home with nothing but the TV and his action figures. Morgana’s a year older and keeps telling him that grade school’s amazing, and she already has her own posse to prove it, barely two months into the school year.

 

Arthur’s slightly envious (not that he’ll admit it), because at five Arthur’s a precocious little brat and after the tenth time he snatches the toy crown away when they play at kings and dragons in the playground at lunch nobody’s really that keen to play with him anymore.

 

Merlin arrives over the summer, a gangly fifteen-year-old teen looking for a summer job. He’s all elbows and knobby knees, with the threat of puberty-induced acne constantly making itself known all over his face, and Arthur quickly dismisses him as another one of the pesky kindergarten teaching assistants.

 

At lunch on Merlin’s first day though, Arthur’s sitting at his usual spot on the swings, eating his sandwiches and pretending not to care that everyone else is having a ton of fun playing tag on the other end of the playground.

 

“You’re Arthur, aren’t you?”

 

Arthur’s shriek of surprise is muffled by the bread in his mouth, but he does fall off the swing. Turning around in outrage, his eyes meet the dark, twinkling ones of Merlin, now blinking at him in concern.

 

“Mmf,” Arthur says, trying to retain some (any) sense of dignity as he swallows the bread in his mouth. “Arthur Pendragon.”

 

“Merlin,” says Merlin, although Arthur’s pretty sure he’s heard all the teachers introduce their new addition at least five times already (a fact he is quick to inform Merlin of).

 

Merlin only rolls his eyes.

 

“Well, _Sir_ Arthur,” Merlin grins good-naturedly, “I’m pretty sure the evil dragon’s not hiding out here, so I don’t know why you’re lying in wait here for him.”

 

Arthur blinks at Merlin, too gobsmacked to sputter out a response until a couple of minutes later.

 

“A-and how would _you_ know that?” he returns imperiously, chest unconsciously puffing up as he falls into his favourite ‘king’ role.

 

Merlin chortles and waggles his fingers.

 

“I’m Dragoon the Great, the best magician ever, and I know _everything_.”

 

Arthur spends the rest of lunch chasing Merlin around the playground on their quest for the dragon, other playmates long forgotten.

 

~

 

At age eight, Arthur is cruising through grade school. He’s smart so the tests come easy to him, and he’s got friends now, like Gwaine the crazy prankster and Lance the baseball prodigy.

 

Merlin drops by the kindergarten every summer holiday and it’s become a routine for Arthur to sneak out of the house and visit Merlin over lunch. He picks at Merlin’s home-cooked lunches (he’s never had a mum to make them for him) and tells Merlin all about school. Merlin, in return, doesn’t complain about the food-stealing, only listens quietly and smiles.

 

The kindergarten kids all love Merlin but they’ve gotten used to Arthur’s gatecrashing and no longer complain about the spiriting away of their teacher. They still shoot Arthur the occasional envious glance, though, and it makes Arthur feel slightly proud. Merlin’s _special_ , and Merlin _specially_ chooses to spend his lunchtimes with Arthur, and it’s because of that that Arthur comes to treasure his summer lunchtimes.

 

“I’ve got magic,” Merlin jokes one day, eyes straying to the children playing by the swing and not-very-subtly watching Merlin and Arthur’s lunch rendezvous like vultures. “That’s why all children love me. It’s my magical ability.”

 

Arthur blinks.

 

“So does your magic work on me too?”

 

Merlin grins and reaches over to ruffle Arthur’s hair, ignoring the other boy’s squawk of protest.

 

“Nah, you’re special.”

 

~

 

The next year Merlin finishes his A-levels and spends majority of the year hanging around the kindergarten, while waiting for his university application’s results to come back.

 

Arthur is thrilled by this new development.

 

In the spring of Arthur’s ninth year, emboldened by too many days of being strong-armed into watching Morgana’s chick flicks because she won’t surrender the TV remote control, Arthur carefully gathers a bunch of wildflowers and proposes to Merlin.

 

He, of course, doesn’t really know what a proposal is. (Morgana does, though, and doesn’t let him live this down for the next twenty years of his life.)

 

But he presents the flowers to Merlin anyway, tells him earnestly to marry him, and Merlin’s eyebrows climb so high they disappear into his hair.

 

“Arthur,” Merlin says carefully, “do you know what marrying someone means?”

 

Nine-year-old Arthur nods earnestly, ignoring the kindergarten children trying to peer around the jungle gym and see what he’s doing.

 

“It means I really like you and we can be the best of friends forever!”

 

Merlin’s eyes crinkle as he smiles, and he reaches out to close Arthur’s fingers back over the semi-wilted stems.

 

“I can’t marry you Arthur,” Merlin says patiently, “you’re only nine years old.”

 

Arthur wilts a bit, but somewhere at the back of his mind he notes that Merlin didn’t exactly say _no_ , so he stuffs the flowers back into his pocket and peers back up at Merlin.

 

“Then you better wait,” he says with all the gravity he can muster, scrunching up his nose and curling his fists in resolution.

 

Merlin only laughs and ruffles his hair.

 

~

 

Four years later, Arthur’s thirteen, and Uther passes away after a heart attack in the last leg of autumn.

 

Uther may have been his father, but work has always kept the man distant and while there’s a definite feeling of loss he doesn’t feel compelled to shed any tears as he watches the coffin slide into the furnace of the crematorium.

 

Morgana stands next to him, stiff-backed and tall, one cold hand wrapped around his. Her relationship with their father was even more strained than his had been, and Arthur’s not sure if she actually feels any grief at all, but they put up a front for all the colleagues and acquaintances that come by.

 

Arthur can’t act as well as Morgana can, and after twenty minutes of listening to empty condolences and plastering a painfully plastic smile on his face, he slips out the back door of the crematorium, staring dolefully at the sky outside. It’s begun to rain and he hasn’t got an umbrella, but he doesn’t mind the rain splashing down on his vest and dress shirt and shoes.

 

“Hey.”

 

Arthur blinks, eyes coming back to focus on a face he hasn’t seen much of in four years.

 

“Heard what happened,” Merlin says, slight Scottish accent colouring his voice after four years of university in Edinburgh. “I’m sorry.”

 

Arthur shrugs, ducking under Merlin’s ridiculously large umbrella. Merlin takes his silence into stride, merely tilting his head to beckon Arthur forward, leading him away from the cold, hollow crematorium.

 

“If you need to talk,” Merlin says, after a while, “you have my number. I’m back in London for now, since I’ve finished my degree.”

 

Arthur doesn’t reply, but his right hand snakes out from his pocket and grips Merlin’s, taking in the warmth and drawing some kind of comfort from it, as they slowly walk through the rain.

 

Merlin doesn’t pull away until they make it back to the crematorium, where Morgana chews Arthur out for abandoning her in her time of crisis.

 

~

 

Arthur is delighted when his growth spurt finally hits in his final year of middle school, nearly a year after Gwaine and Lance and Leon’s, and he’s pleased that he can tower over people now if he pulls himself up straight.

 

(To his dismay, he’s still shorter than Merlin, although since Merlin’s taller than most people anyway Arthur lets it go.)

 

Gwaine’s begun chasing girls instead of beetles. He spends most of the term coming up with terrible pickup lines that Arthur and Lance chortle over when the teacher’s not looking, and no matter how many times he gets rejected he still wants to try again. (Gwaine swears he’ll definitely be suave enough to charm all the girls one day; Arthur privately hopes he doesn’t, because playboy Gwaine will undoubtedly be more enthusiastic in his pursuits than 15-year-old Gwaine.)

 

Arthur doesn’t understand this – thanks to Morgana he knows how to identify and appreciate female beauty, but he prefers to simply appreciate from a distance rather than chase any of the girls around like Gwaine does, or silently moon over one like Lance has taken to doing recently with the Gwen girl sitting on the opposite end of their classroom.

 

He’s definitely popular among the girls – a fact that Gwaine bemoans, if only because Arthur doesn’t care to introduce Gwaine to any of the girls who confess to him – and he’s long learned how to turn each and every one down without making them cry.

 

Gwaine jokes that he’ll never get laid, and for some absurd reason the thought of Merlin inadvertently flashes across Arthur’s mind for a brief second.

 

The significance of this does not come to him until much later.

 

~

 

At eighteen, Arthur’s just finished his own A-levels, and waiting every day for a reply from the applications he’s sent off to Oxford and Harvard and Yale. In his free time he meets up every week at Starbucks with Merlin, who at twenty-eight has become an assistant professor at a college in London, with a Master’s degree in literature and philosophy.

 

“Going overseas for university?” Merlin asks one of those Thursdays, peering over his nerdy glasses and students’ essays at Arthur.

 

Arthur hums, reaching for his latte.

 

“Not sure,” he admits. “I’ve applied to LSE too, just in case I decide not to.”

 

Merlin sets down his red pen, sips from his vanilla frappuccino, and frowns. “You’re qualified enough to go overseas, and I’m pretty sure you’ll ace that scholarship interview you’ve been fretting about for the past month, so what’s the problem?”

 

“It’s far away,” Arthur shrugs. “I won’t be able to come back and visit y- Morgana. And people.”

 

He catches his slip before the entire word comes out, but they both know Morgana’s having the time of her life pursuing a fashion degree in Paris and won’t be available for much visiting anyway.

 

Merlin’s eyes crinkle in amusement.

 

“Gwaine’s going to St. Andrews, isn’t he? And Lance to Brown? Not much opportunity for visiting, unless you mean to badger Leon down at the shop every day.”

 

Arthur rues the day he’d introduced his friends to Merlin, because they’d of course wanted to discuss their futures with the older man, and now he’s all out of excuses to cover for his Freudian slip.

 

He flounders, trying to cover up by sipping at his latte, so when Merlin reaches awkwardly around the papers on the table and places his hand on Arthur’s he nearly snorts hot coffee up his nose in surprise.

 

“Go,” Merlin says. “Don’t let something like that hold you back. You’ll have the holidays, and there’s Skype and stuff too. You deserve better.”

 

There’s so much conviction in his voice (and there should be, Arthur reflects later, considering Merlin’s watched him grow up for nearly ten years, and knows what he’s capable of) that Arthur can’t come up with a reply.

 

“You once asked me to wait,” Merlin says after a stilted pause. “If you haven’t changed your mind, I’ll wait another three or four years.”

 

It takes a while for Arthur to register what this means, but his mind eventually dredges up a memory of wildflowers and Morgana chortling, and he lets a smile curl at his lips, pretending not to notice the slight flush spreading across his face.

 

“You’d better,” he says, turning his hand around under Merlin’s so he can grasp the skinny wrist firmly. “I’ll hold you to that.”

 

~

 

Arthur comes back from America with a small velvet box in one hand and a handful of freshly-picked wildflowers in the other, and presents both to Merlin with as much aplomb as his nine-year-old self once had.

 

(This time, Merlin says _yes_.)

 

 

 

 

 

_fin._


End file.
